


A Mass of Cells

by jmtorres



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Accidents, Cancer, F/M, I mean "blame the andorians" is enterprise all the way, I'm hard-pressed to say what corner of star trek canon to attach this to, Pregnancy, but disco has strongly influenced my interpretations of Amanda and Sarek, i mean you can't categorically rule out cancer, social stigma of mind-melding also very enterprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 06:44:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18405278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmtorres/pseuds/jmtorres
Summary: "I read once that there's a specific type of cancer that can give a false positive on a pregnancy test. That's probably more likely. I mean, sure, I *got* a pregnancy test because I missed my period and the customs delays meant I was off birth control for three weeks but, let's face it, the chances of your sperm fertilizing my ova are pretty low."





	A Mass of Cells

**Author's Note:**

  * For [niqaeli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/niqaeli/gifts).



"So," Amanda said to the Vulcan pharmacist, "you carry _everything_ now, yes?"

Spanek stared back. "We do, yes, now stock a wide range of human medicines, from reliable suppliers. As I assured you, the import issue with the Andorian captain has been resolved and we should have no further problems acquiring anything you should need."

No one at the pharmacy had ever _apologized_ to her for the mix-up that had kept them from filling her prescriptions when she'd first arrived on Vulcan; they had staunchly closed ranks and blamed the Andorians. Inadequate quarantine protocols, mislabeled manifests, attempting to bribe incorruptible Vulcan customs officers: all the fault of the transport ship, not the local pharmacy. 

"Do you currently have in stock," Amanda asked, "a pregnancy test?"

Spanek the pharmacist produced the requested item with stony silence and extremely judgy eyebrows. Amanda bought it and got the hell out of there.

She went home. She took the test. She sat on the toilet with her underwear around her knees waiting for it to process. She stared at the result in disbelief, then pulled up her pants and thought about death.

"So I might be pregnant," she said to Sarek without any preamble. Vulcans tended to prefer that you just get to the point, and while Sarek seemed to like listening to her wander through subjects in a more human way, for a serious conversation direct was probably best. So she should probably spit out the other half. "Or I have cancer," she said. "I read once that there's a specific type of cancer that can give a false positive on a pregnancy test. That's probably more likely. I mean, sure, I _got_ a pregnancy test because I missed my period and the customs delays meant I was off birth control for three weeks but, let's face it, the chances of your sperm fertilizing my ova are pretty low."

"Please," Sarek said, catching her nervous, fluttering hands between his. They were alone, of course; Amanda wouldn't have broached the topic if they hadn't been, but the romantic intimacy of his fingers had her checking over her shoulder that no one would catch them like this. "Begin at the beginning. I lack some context, I think."

Amanda took a few deep breaths, one right after another but making herself slow down. He breathed with her; she wasn't sure if he was doing it deliberately to try to calm her or if it was some remnant of mind-meld, rekindled by the hand-holding. "Okay, so—pregnancy. That's a concept that translates, yes? Vulcans don't lay eggs?"

Sarek's eyebrows were very high, but she didn't feel judged with him. She thought he might be amused, in a mutual way, since she had made a joke, more or less. "Bearing embryonic young within the body until they are developed enough to survive separately?" he asked, _asked_ , as if he thought verifying definitions was a good idea.

_Oh boy_ , thought Amanda, _if we're really getting back to basics, what else should I confirm_? "And the way you get pregnant is sex. Right? Please tell me that's true for Vulcans too." She suddenly had a pang of fear in her chest that Vulcans didn't do any such thing and Sarek had only been humoring her, marveling at human absurdity.

"Sex is also a social behavior," said Sarek, and he sounded uncertain. _Oh, this was not good._

"I mean, yes, of course it is," Amanda said, although she might well have questioned whether Vulcans in general engaged in it without the logical purpose of reproduction. "But if you put gamete-producing organs in close enough proximity with each other, pregnancy _can_ happen."

"If the gametes are species-compatible, which as you point out, ours should not be," Sarek said. 

"So I kind of took an illogical leap," Amanda admitted. "You see, it—I missed my period. I know I told you I get one every month, but the general rule is actually, human women in the childbearing age range have a period every month they're _not pregnant_. So missing one can be an indication that you _are_. That I am. And the hormone pills I take, they're called birth control because one of their purposes is to prevent pregnancy. So I had a symptom of pregnancy when I'd been off medication that prevents pregnancy and definitely had been having sex which, in the right configuration, can cause pregnancy, so I thought: maybe I should take a test to see if I'm pregnant."

Sarek's brows had drawn together. "Or had cancer. What does the test measure, exactly?"

"The level of a specific hormone in urine," Amanda said. "Look, I was expecting it to be negative. I was expecting to get a result that confirmed what I logically knew, that I _wasn't_ pregnant, that you and I can't make a baby." 

"Which would mean—" Sarek waited a moment for her to take the prompt and when she didn't, went on, "—what, exactly, regarding the symptom you had observed?” 

"That something was wrong with me," Amanda said, "but like, not cancer in particular, I was thinking maybe nutritional deficit that I'd need to take some more supplements for. Or some kind of reaction to environmental change."

Sarek considered this a moment. "So, in any case, some more serious than others, you should see a physician."

"Yeah," Amanda agreed. "For pregnancy too, even. Not that I am, of course. I just." 

He bent forward to touch his forehead to hers, and she felt a tear slip down her face and realized he must have seen it before it fell. "Did you want to be?" he asked her, with surprising insight. 

"I would say it would have been less scary than cancer, but I'm not sure that's actually true," Amanda said. Just talking to a Vulcan made you break things down in details sometimes. It was funny that he was getting her to do it with emotions. "Pregnancy is risky for humans, especially if there's potential health issues for the baby. But it would have been—a condition with a time frame, and with a potential positive outcome, too."

"Let us not assume it is cancer," Sarek said. "A human living long-term in the Vulcan environment is an untested circumstance. It could be as you suggested, an issue with your diet, or some other aspect of your life here."

"What if I can't live on Vulcan?" Amanda asked him suddenly. 

"Then I shall seek a posting on Earth again," Sarek replied simply. 

They went to the doctor. Amanda went through the entire explanation again, including admission of the illogic that had led her to take the pregnancy test for whatever dubious diagnostic value that data might offer. (Sarek hastened to add that her irrationality was not a symptom of illness, merely part of her human state of being.) The doctor, T'Lark, did not offer any theories or reassurances, instead merely said that she required more data and ordered full-body scans.

As she came back to the waiting room to sit with Sarek again, Amanda passed an intern in the hall. She found Sarek looking perturbed. "They wanted a cheek swab," he told her.

"Oh, God, it's the human kissing," Amanda said, half in jest, falling back in her seat next to him. "Your saliva is deadly to me! You should have warned me, husband."

"Had I but known," Sarek sighed, allowing her to lean on him, resting his face on her hair momentarily. 

After a time, Dr. T'Lark came back in; by then Amanda and Sarek were decorously sitting solely in their own seats, close but not touching. T'Lark pulled up a hologram of Amanda's body to illustrate her findings to them. "Given your concerns," she said, "we did a focused search of your reproductive organs. We found a small mass of cells, which we compared to human references to determine what stage of—"

"A tumor," Amanda whispered, closing her eyes. She reached for Sarek's hand, found his wrist in his sleeve—good, that was borderline acceptable for her to touch in public. She realized T'Lark had stopped talking and warily opened her eyes again.

T'Lark had her head cocked and was wearing an expression that Amanda had learned to recognize as meaning roughly, "Obviously, my Vulcan hearing is acute enough to have heard your remark, but I cannot tell if you meant me to hear it, and therefore cannot be certain whether it is socially appropriate to respond to it."

"Just tell me," Amanda pleaded.

"An embryonic mass of cells," T'Lark amended gently, "which we determined to be approximately ten weeks old by human references, or six weeks if it is following Vulcan development. Do you know the precise date of conception?"

"The precise—no," Amanda said, blushing. Eight weeks ago—eight weeks and two days ago they had been married on Earth, and a day short of eight weeks ago they had taken up residence on Vulcan: someone was sure to accuse them of a marriage of propriety for the child's sake, she thought giddily. Her heart was hammering probably loud enough for both Sarek and T'Lark to hear. She couldn't quite hold the idea in her head, she'd been too certain she was ill or even dying. And instead, the absurd thing, the thing she hadn't believed possible, was true? "How did this happen?" 

"Is there, could there have been," Sarek asked, "some exposure to human spermatozoa?"

"What? No," Amanda said, blinking at him in surprise. She couldn't tell if he was actually asking her if she'd slept with a human man, or if he thought there could have been some accidental contamination of the pharmacy goods. Her hygiene products? He didn't seem upset enough to be thinking she had betrayed him, just querulous, confused. _Those damned Andorians,_ she thought. She was scattered, the whole thing was too big for her to think about. She squeezed his arm where she held it. "Sarek—"

T'Lark held up a hand. "We thought that was the most likely possibility, of course, but when we examined the embryo in detail we found several uniquely Vulcan traits." She let her hand drop, returning to a serene posture. "That is why we estimated its age from both human and Vulcan referents. It seems to be a true hybrid and is genetically similar to your profile, Ambassador." 

Sarek's other hand came to rest on top of her wrist, mostly separated by her sleeve, but his fingertips brushed her knuckles. Amanda felt a rush of comfort, and knew it was only partly her reaction to his seeking to touch her; he was also lightly leaning on the link between their minds. He did not look at her, as if perhaps he could disguise what he was doing from T'Lark by avoiding acknowledgement. "Is it viable?" he asked.

"I do not know," T'Lark admitted. "That the development has progressed this far without aid is remarkable. I suspect we will need to perform interventions as the pregnancy progresses, and I would like to monitor you closely," she said to Amanda. "If you wish to proceed on this path, that is. There are severe risks to your health if the embryo develops certain Vulcan traits; your body could reject the pregnancy as too foreign."

"Oh, I know," Amanda said, grateful to be addressed and overwhelmed by possibility and so incredulous it made her flippant: "Ordinary human pregnancies can get screwed up if the rhesus factor doesn't match." T'Lark looked impassive, so Amanda tried to explain: "It's such a minor thing, a variance in blood type, but it can trigger an allergic reaction—"

"Yes," T'Lark agreed. "That is an example of the sort of problem we hope to anticipate."

"It doesn't seem like it should be possible, though," Amanda said, her emotions circling back. Had she gotten a logical answer, actually? "How could we have been compatible? How did this happen?" she asked again.

T'Lark looked distinctly uncomfortable. "I have a theory, but its utility may be limited. The mechanism of action is not known, as the phenomenon has not been adequately studied due to social stigma. Did you mind-meld during sexual intercourse?" She addressed the question to Sarek while pointedly not glancing down at Amanda's hand on his wrist and his, in turn, on hers. 

"Yes," Sarek said.

"And she was capable of receiving the mind-meld, despite the lack of human psionic abilities?" T'Lark seemed a lot more invested than appropriate for a topic with such social stigma, but then maybe she was more interested in collecting data than in enforcing social order. 

"Yes," Sarek answered shortly. "You believe this is relevant?"

"It is known that mind-melding can increase the probability of conception," T'Lark replied, "if not why that is the case." Amanda would have been willing to bet she'd personally pitched a study that had been shot down.

Then her brain zinged back to the personal. "We mind-melded a baby," she said to Sarek, her voice breaking with delighted laughter.

"It is not yet a baby," T'Lark said sharply. "It is an embryo, approaching—"

"Human imprecision," Sarek waved this aside. "They have grammatical categories for using one type of word to mean another related type of word. You'll have to learn to parse such expressions if you are going to be working closely with my wife during this pregnancy. In this case, one can determine what she meant with a simple tense change. We mind-melded that which will become a baby."

"May," T'Lark objected. 

"Does it have your permission?" Amanda couldn't help but snark back. 

"It is not a matter of permission, but of how many things could yet go wrong," T'Lark replied. "Do you understand this? Even if you proceed with the pregnancy, I cannot guarantee it will result in an infant. Or even if it does, that the infant will survive to become a child. You indicated that risks were known to you but your, your, emotionalism suggests—"

"Attitude," Sarek corrected. "They can be overcome with both negative and positive emotions; it is, in particular, her positive attitude to which you object? I must tell you, if there is difficulty ahead, you will much prefer a human with a positive attitude than a negative one. Do not berate her for the manner in which she chooses to find strength."

"Vulcans always prefer it when humans are sad, as long as we're not crying," Amanda told T'Lark. "The way sadness changes our affect, it looks to you as if we're giving everything due consideration and thinking about it seriously. Sometimes that's even true. In this case, I came to you sad and afraid: I came to you for a diagnosis of disease, thinking the most logical outcome was that I would be getting a death sentence today—oh fine," she said at T'Lark's expression, "not a sentence, a statement of inevitability. In the near term. In that sense I have already considered and faced the risks you want me to take seriously and the part that's new, that I'm reacting to, is that in addition to the chance of death or illness or hardship, there is the chance of new life. Don't you think that's worth celebrating?"

T'Lark unbent enough to say, "I do not think it is worth celebrating at this stage of development, but I do find it fascinating. I take it you wish to proceed with the pregnancy?"

"Yes," Amanda said immediately, and looked to Sarek.

And Sarek said softly, "Of course, beloved," and he used the Vulcan term, that meant _the other half of me_ , that was considered too emotional for common use. 

"I feel like I should warn you," Amanda added, to Sarek, to T'Lark as well, "that human expectant mothers are perceived, even in our own society, as getting more emotional. You're going to have a _lot_ to put up with."

T'Lark said, "I will bear it in mind." Her face was stoic, her chin raised a little. She was probably telling herself anything was worth getting her hands on the raw data of a mind-meld hybrid fetus. 

Sarek said, "I will be prepared to support you." His eyes were gentle, and Amanda thought he was almost smiling.


End file.
